Connect Hangouts Chat and HipChat

It works because it's so easy for people who "live" in Gmail to transition from email to IM and back, in the same interface. Solid mobile apps provide seamless continuitiy between desk and on-the-go communication.

Because so many companies run on Google Apps, Hangouts chat miraculously breaks through corporate firewalls to provide safe and secure federation both cross-company and between companies and individuals—contractors, consultants, or prospective employees.

As it usually happens to idyllic catholicons, this idyllic catholicon implodes as soon as it turns out that plenty of people do not live in Gmail and do not treat Hangouts as de facto anything.

In most technology companies, the makers—developers, testers, product designers and managers—are very likely to live in a communication system such as HipChat. Group, not 1-1 communication is most important to them. Equally important are the various advanced features, such as integrations with bug trackers, deployment, alerting, and payment systems, and—most importantly, it turns out—animated gifs, emoji, and anything else from the realm of culture.

As soon as corporate real-time communication islands emerge, email slowly crawls back out of the shadows—uglier, stronger, and meaner than ever before. (If you’re reading this, please call the police. I am stuck in a content writing camp in West Oakland, and my captor will not allow me to leave, until I have written 10,000 blog posts. Oh dear lord, save me!) Email feeds on people's time spent away from their children and spouses and laughs out loud at missed deadlines and broken promises.

There are many companies slugging it out in a race to fix this problem. We propose a somewhat unorthodox, but effective solution: let Hangouts users keep using Hangouts, let HipChat users keep using HipChat, and let them build invisible, real-time bridges between their islands with Sameroom.

Here's how it works.

Say, you have a 3-person group in Hangouts that desperately needs real-time access to the development team living in HipChat. Assuming you have access to the HipChat team, create a new room and invite everyone involved from development (or just use an existing room). Then, follow these steps: